Gov. Tom Wolf plans to appoint Leigh M. Chapman, a lawyer who leads a nonprofit that promotes mail voting, to be the state’s next top elections official, tasking her with overseeing a midterm election cycle that will bring national scrutiny to Pennsylvania while the state fends off continued GOP attacks stemming from the 2020 presidential election.

Chapman will become acting secretary of the commonwealth on Jan. 8, Wolf announced Monday. She previously served as policy director in the agency she will soon head, the Department of State, from 2015 to 2017.

“Throughout my career, I have worked to ensure that voting rights are protected, and to improve access to the ballot box,” Chapman said. “I look forward to continuing that work in my new role, and to build on the tremendously successful election reforms in Pennsylvania over the last several years.”

Chapman will replace Veronica Degraffenreid, who received praise from Wolf for overseeing the office in an acting capacity following the February resignation of the last permanent secretary, Kathy Boockvar.

Wolf originally intended to elevate Degraffenreid to a permanent role in the office but withdrew the nomination after she clashed with Senate Republicans over their controversial review of the 2020 presidential election. She will become a special adviser to Wolf after Chapman takes over the department.

Wolf’s announcement Monday was silent on whether he intended Chapman to assume the secretary role on a permanent basis, which would require legislative confirmation.

“She will be acting secretary, where she will be able to perform the full duties and responsibilities of a confirmed secretary,” Wolf spokesperson Elizabeth Rementer said in a separate statement.

The chain of events leading to Chapman’s appointment began with Boockvar, who oversaw the implementation of Pennsylvania’s 2019 mail voting law, which was passed with bipartisan support and administered the presidential election cycle amid the coronavirus pandemic. Decisions she made around mail balloting became the target of GOP attacks on the integrity of the 2020 election in Pennsylvania, fueled by false statements by former President Donald Trump and his Republican supporters.

She resigned unexpectedly months later due to an unrelated issue when it was revealed that her office bungled the administration of a referendum to extend the statute of limitations for civil claims filed by child sex abuse victims against their abusers. The Department of State is required to advertise state constitutional amendments before they are placed on the ballot but failed to do so in time for the 2021 primary.

https://www.inquirer.com/politics/pennsylvania/pennsylvania-gov-tom-wolf-secretary-leigh-chapman-2022-elections-20211227.html

HARRISBURG (KDKA) — Strike teams are being sent to hospitals in the state as the health care system continues to struggle against the latest COVID-19 wave.

The Wolf administration made the announcement on Tuesday. FEMA approved Governor Wolf’s appeal for assistance from earlier this month.

Federal officials will decide where the strike teams are going in Pennsylvania while state agencies assess the needs of various health care systems.

KDKA’s Jennifer Borrasso reached out to a half-dozen hospital systems in the Pittsburgh area, and none had any details about the teams.

“Staffing is our number one issue across the state right now,” Allegheny Health Network Chief Medical Officer Dr. Don Whiting said. “At AHN last year we had 300 nursing openings. Now, we have 1,100.”

The news of strike teams is welcomed news for AHN.

https://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2021/12/28/wolf-fema-request-approved/

PITTSBURGH — The City of Pittsburgh will officially swear in Mayor-elect Ed Gainey as the 61st mayor of Pittsburgh on Jan. 3.

Because of COVID-19 cases in the area and guidance from public health officials, the ceremony will now take place virtually.

In a historic upset, Gainey defeated Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto in May’s primary.

The inauguration will be preceded by an interfaith prayer for Pittsburgh’s future that will be livestreamed on Mayor-elect Gainey’s social media pages.

https://www.wpxi.com/news/local/changes-made-inauguration-pittsburgh-mayor-elect-ed-gainey/SK4E6JTCZND5XBFDGDGLYYJ6MI/

>>15274043

What is a president allowed to do? What is the actual duties of a president? He asked for the wall to be built, he couldn’t build it himself. He tried to persuade the people that make up the U.S. government to do the right thing but they didn’t want to do what was right. The most important thing he did was expose what both parties are really like.

>>15274091

It was a serious question actually. I think he did some good but didn’t do all he promised. I wasn’t trying to stop your debate. After the election there was a state of confusion on what would happen next. I don’t regret voting for him twice.

article from September 2020

A team of researchers at the University of Minnesota has found traces of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, in lake water.

The virus was detected by a group led by Richard Melvin, an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Minnesota Medical School, in mid-September. Melvin and his team have been sampling water from various beaches on Lake Superior since July 4 on a weekly basis as a partnership with Minnesota Sea Grant, an organization that works to enhance the state’s coastal environment. The team hadn’t found the virus during weekly tests, but, on Sept. 11, that changed.

The research team detected SARS-CoV-2 at 100 to 1,000 copies per liter, or 10,000 times lower than levels observed in wastewater. “I was surprised and not surprised,” Dr. Richard Melvin, assistant professor at the University of Minnesota Medical School, Duluth campus, tells Yahoo Life. “We were testing a hypothesis that beachgoers would bring this on their bodies into the water, but when you see it on the machine, there’s this sinking feeling.”

The source — or sources — of the virus are unknown at this point, Melvin says, but the research team plans to continue to monitor the water, as well as work with local health experts to try to pinpoint the source of the virus in the water.

The news sounds scary, but public health experts say people shouldn’t panic.

Dr. Richard Watkins, an infectious disease physician in Akron, Ohio, and a professor of internal medicine at the Northeast Ohio Medical University, tells Yahoo Life that, while research has shown that SARS-CoV-2 can show up in wastewater, there’s no data to suggest that the virus is actually transmitted through water. “However, there is a lot we don’t know about the virus, so nothing can be definitively ruled out at this point,” he says.

But finding the virus in water “doesn’t mean that they’re infection particles,” Dr. Thomas Russo, professor and chief of infectious disease at the University at Buffalo, tells Yahoo Life. “It’s highly unlikely that SARS-CoV-2 can survive in a body of water for very long,” he says.

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/covid19-detected-lake-water-dont-panic-191828650.html